THE CONGREGATION

FOLLOWED by Ap cides, the Nazarene gained the side of the Sarnus; that river, which now has shrunk into a petty stream, then rushed gayly into the sea, covered with countless vessels, and reflecting on its waves the gardens, the vines, the palaces, and the temples of Pompeii. From its more noisy and frequented banks, Olinthus directed his steps to a path which ran amid a shady vista of trees, at the distance of a few paces from the river. This walk was in the evening, a favorite resort of the Pompeians, but during the heat and business of the day was seldom visited, save by some groups of playful children, some meditative poet, or some disputative philosophers. At the side furthest from the river, frequent copses of box interspersed the more delicate and evanescent foliage, and these were cut into a thousand quaint shapes, sometimes into the forms of fauns and satyrs, sometimes into the mimicry of Egyptian pyramids, sometimes into the letters that composed the name of a popular or eminent citizen. Thus the false taste is equally ancient as the pure; and the retired traders of Hackney and Paddington, a century ago, were little aware, perhaps, that in their tortured yews and sculptured box, they found their models in the most polished period of Roman antiquity, in the gardens of Pompeii, and the villas of the fastidious Pliny.

This walk now, as the noonday sun shone perpendicularly through the checkered leaves, was entirely deserted; at least no other forms than those of Olinthus and the priest infringed upon the solitude. They sat themselves on one of the benches, placed at intervals between the trees, and facing the faint breeze that came languidly from the river, whose waves danced and sparkled before them a singular and contrasted pair; the believer in the latest--the priest of the most ancient worship of the world!

"Since thou left me so abruptly," said Olinthus, "hast thou been happy? has thy heart found contentment under these priestly robes? hast thou, still yearning -for the voice of God, heard it whisper comfort to thee from the oracles of Isis? That sigh, that averted countenance, give me the answer my soul predicted."

"Alas!" answered Ap cides, sadly, thou seest before thee a wretched and distracted man! From my childhood upward I have idolized the dreams of virtue! I have envied the holiness of men who, in caves and lonely temples, have been admitted to the companionship of beings above the world; my days have been consumed with feverish and vague desires; my nights with mocking but solemn visions. Seduced by the mystic prophecies of an impostor, I have indued these robes my nature (I confess it to thee frankly) my nature has revolted at what I have seen and been doomed to share in. Searching after truth, I have become the minister of falsehoods. On the evening in which we last met, I was buoyed by hopes created by that same impostor, whom I ought already to have better known. I have no matter no matter! suffice it, I have added perjury and sin to rashness and to sorrow. The veil is now rent forever from my eyes; I behold a villain where I obeyed a demigod; the earth darkens in my sight; I am in the deepest abyss of gloom; I know not if there be gods above; if we are the things of chance; if beyond the bounded and melancholy present there is annihilation or all hereafter tell me, then, thy faith ; solve me these doubts, if thou hast indeed the power!"

I do not marvel,"answered the Nazarene, "that thou hast thus erred, or that thou art thus skeptic. Eighty years ago there was no assurance to man of God, or of a certain and definite future beyond the grave. New laws are declared to him who has ears a heaven, a true Olympus, is revealed to him who has eyes heed then, and listen."

And with all the earnestness of a man believing ardently himself, and zealous to convert, the Nazarene poured forth to Ap cides the assurance of Scriptural promise, he spoke first of the sufferings and miracles of Christ he wept as he spoke; he turned next to the glories of the Saviour's ascension--to the clear predictions of Revelation. He described that pure and unsensual heaven destined to the virtuous--those fires and torments that were the doom of guilt.

The doubts which spring up to the mind of later reasoners `in the immensity of the sacrifice of God to man, were not such as would occur to an early heathen. He had been accustomed to believe that the gods had lived upon earth, and taken upon themselves the forms of men; had shared in human passions, in human labors, and in human misfortunes. What was the travail of his own Alcm na's son, whose altars now smoked with the incense of countless cities, but a toil for the human race. Had not the great Dorian Apollo expiated a mystic sin by descending to the grave? Those who were the deities of heaven had been the law-givers or benefactors on earth, and gratitude had led to worship. It seemed, therefore, to the heathen, a doctrine neither new nor strange, that Christ had been sent from heaven, that an immortal had indeed mortality, and tasted the bitterness of death. And the end for which he thus toiled and thus suffered how far more glorious did it seem to Ap cides than that for which the deities of old had visited the nether world, and passed through the gates of death ! Was it not worthy of a God to descend to these dim valleys, in order to clear up the clouds gathered over the dark mount beyond to satisfy the doubts of sages to convert speculation into certainty by example to point out the rules of life by revelation to solve the enigma of the grave and prove that the soul did not yearn in vain when it dreamed of an immortality? In this last was the great argument of those lowly men destined to convert the earth. As nothing is more flattering to the pride and the hopes of man than the belief in a future state, so nothing could be more vague and confused than the notions of the heathen sages upon that mystic subject. Ap cides had already learned that the faith of the philosophers was not that of the herd; that if they secretly professed a creed in some diviner power, it was not the creed which they thought it wise to impart to the community. He had already learned that even the priest ridiculed what he preached to the people that the notions of the few and the many were never united. But in this new faith it seemed to him that the philosophers, priests, and people, the expounders of the religion and its followers, were alike accordant; they did not speculate and debate upon immortality, they spoke of it as a thing certain and assured; the magnificence of the promise dazzled him its consolations soothed. For the Christian faith made its early converts among sinners! many of its fathers and its martyrs were those who had felt the bitterness of vice, and who were therefore no longer tempted by its false aspect from the paths of an austere and uncompromising virtue. All the assurances of this healing faith invited to repentance they were peculiarly adapted to the bruised and sore of spirit; the very remorse, which Ap cides felt for his late excesses, made him incline to one who found holiness in that remorse, and who whispered of the joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.

"Come," said the Nazarene, as he perceived the effect he had produced, "come to the humble hall in which we meet a select and a chosen few; listen there to our prayers; note the sincerity of our repentant tears; mingle in our simple sacrifice not of victims, nor of garlands, but offered by white-robed thoughts upon the altar of the heart. The flowers that we lay there are imperishable--they bloom over us when we are no more; nay, they accompany us beyond the grave, they spring up beneath our feet in heaven, they delight us with an external odor, for they are of the soul, offerings partake of its nature; these offerings are temptations overcome, and sins repented. Come, oh, come! lose not another moment; prepare already for the great, the awful journey, from darkness to light, from sorrow to bliss, from corruption to immortality! This is the day of the Lord the Son, a day that we have set apart for our devotions. Though we meet usually at night, yet some among us are gathered together even now. What joy, what triumph, will be with us all, if we can bring one stray lamb into the sacred fold"'

There seemed to Ap cides, so naturally pure of heart, something ineffably generous and benign in that spirit of conversation which animated Olinthus a spirit that found its own bliss in the happiness of others that sought in its wide sociality to make companions for eternity. He was touched, softened and subdued. He was not in that mood which can bear to be left alone; curiosity, too, mingled with his purer stimulants he was anxious to see those rites of which so many dark and contradictory rumors were afloat. He paused a moment, looked over his garb, thought of Arbaces, shuddered with horror, lifted his eyes to the broad brow of the Nazarene, intent, anxious, watchful but for his benefit, for his salvation! He drew his cloak round him, so as wholly to conceal his robes, and said, Lead on, I follow thee."

Olinthus pressed his hand joyfully, and then descending to the river-side, hailed one of the boats that plied there constantly; they entered it; an awning overhead, while it sheltered them from the sun, screened also their persons from observation; they rapidly skimmed the wave. From one of the boats that passed them floated a soft music, and its prow was decorated with flowers it was gliding toward the sea.

So," said Olinthus, sadly, " unconscious and mirthful in their delusions, sail the votaries of luxury into the great ocean of storm and shipwreck; we pass them, silent and unnoticed, to gain the land."

Ap cides, lifting his eyes, caught through the aperture in the awning a glimpse of the face of one of the inmates of that gay bark--it was the face of Ione. The lovers were embarked on the excursion at which we have been made present. The priest sighed, and once more sunk back upon his seat. They reached the shore where, in the suburbs, an alley of small and mean houses stretched toward the bank; they dismissed the boat, landed, and Olinthus, preceding the priest, threaded the labyrinth of lanes, and arrived at last at the closed door of a habitation somewhat larger than its neighbors. He knocked thrice the door was opened and closed again, as Ap cides followed his guide across the threshold.

They passed a deserted atrium and gained an inner chamber of moderate size, which, when the door was closed, received its only light from a small window cut over the door itself. But, halting at the threshold of this chamber, and knocking at the door, Olinthus said, "Peace be with you!" A voice from within returned, "Peace with whom? The Faithful !" answered Olinthus, and the door opened. Twelve or fourteen persons were sitting in a semicircle, silent and seemingly absorbed in thought, and opposite to a crucifix rudely carved in wood.

They lifted up their eyes when Olinthus entered without speaking; the Nazarene himself, before he accosted them, knelt suddenly down, and by his moving lips and his eyes fixed steadfastly on the crucifix, Ap cides saw that he prayed inly. This rite performed, Olinthus turned to the congregation:

"Men and brethren," said he, -start not to behold among you a priest of Isis; he hath sojourned with the blind, but the Spirit hath fallen on him he desires to see, to hear, and to understand.-"

Let him," said one of the assembly; and Ap cides beheld in the speaker a man still younger than himself, of a countenance equally worn and pallid, of an eye which equally spoke of the restless and fiery operations of a working mind.